Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Vincent van Gogh painted his Portrait of Dr. Gachet in June 1890, just weeks after arriving in Auvers-sur-Oise, where the physician Paul-Ferdinand Gachet had agreed to watch over the artist during his final months. Gachet was himself an art enthusiast and friend to many Impressionist painters, and van Gogh immediately felt a kinship with him. The portrait shows the doctor resting his head on his hand, a sprig of foxglove — a medicinal plant also used to treat heart conditions — placed before him on the table. The expression is one of deep melancholy, and van Gogh wrote that he had tried to convey the heartbroken expression of our time.\n\nVan Gogh made two painted versions of the composition, as well as an etching. The first version became one of the most expensive paintings ever sold when it was auctioned in May 1990 for $82.5 million to Japanese industrialist Ryoei Saito — a world record at the time. The painting has not been seen publicly since Saito's death in 1996, and its current whereabouts remain unknown. A second version of the portrait is held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, donated by Gachet's son. The image endures as a meditation on empathy, suffering, and the bond between two men who both understood what it meant to live at the edge of things.